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Sty* 

Stat Unite ratty in Ante rira 

1B19-1B22 

AN ADDRESS DELIVERED BY 

W. GORDON MCCABE 

President of the 
Virginia Historical Society 

BEFORE 

" $*?* CEolotttal iamen of Ammra in tlje 
Stat? of Itrgmia" 

MAY 31, 1911 

AT DUTCH GAP ON JAMES RIVER 



PUBLISHED BY 

THE VIRGINIA SOCIETY OF "COLONIAL DAMES" 

MAY 4th, 1914. 



3tat Mnifaprsttg in Anwrira 



ieia-1622 



AN ADDRESS DELIVERED BY 

W. GORDON MCCABE 

President of the 
Virginia Historical Society 



Sty? (Mutual Dames of Amrrtra in tlje 
State of Utrgittta" 

MAY 31, 1911 

AT DUTCH GAP ON JAMES RIVER 



PUBLISHED BY 

THE VIRGINIA SOCIETY OF "COLONIAL DAMES' 

MAY 4th, 1914. 




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The First University in America 

1619-1622. 



Remarks of Colonel Jennings C. Wise, introducing Colonel W. Gordon 
McCabe on the occasion of the unveiling of a monument by the "Colonial 
Dames of America in the State of Virginia," May 31, 1911, at Dutch Gap, to 
commemorate the founding of the First College and University in America. 

All but three centuries ago the New World renaissance 
had its birth, an event among the most important in the his- 
tory of Virginia. Held close to its heaving breast, and en- 
circled by the jealous arms of this noble river, here it was 
that the cradle of our infant learning was suspended. 

It was here, then, that the seed was planted. But, while 
the tender shoot was cut down before it passed its seedling 
growth, it was not uprooted^-the--ro^ts lived on and grew. 

Those who have examined the surface only have pro- 
claimed our colonial soil unfertile and barren of the higher 
influences. But let me say that it was not through the pov- 
erty of the soil and lack of cultivation, but due to the ruth- 
less torch of savage ignorance, that the original growth was 
destroyed. 

All but buried in the obscurity of the past, and lost to us 
forever, this mighty Powhatan, eternal guardian of our des- 
tinies, changed its course to bring to light those roots im- 
bedded in its banks, and to-day we are summoned here to 
crown, with a halo of truth, the living stump from which a 
myriad of scions have been transplanted. 

As the desecration of ancient structures oft discloses his- 
toric evidences of the past, so here the invader has uncovered 
an inscription which all may read— in the words of the Welsh, 
U T Gwir yn erhyn y Byd"—"The Truth Against the World." 

3 



But who is so well qualified to decipher the history of 
these ruins as the sage you have invited to address you here 
to-day? With the matchless Pegram, he once before thun- 
dered Virginia's protest. To-day he will again demand Vir- 
ginia's due, carrying conviction with his voice to the four 
quarters of the literary world, where he is both known and 
appreciated. 

Several weeks ago I called upon this distinguished 
scholar. Upon his desk there lay forty pages of closely- 
penned notes. He informed me that this was the material he 
had garnered for his address here to-day. Had he been some 
other I might have quailed at the prospect, but I truly re- 
gret that his notes were not more copious, for each phrase, 
each clause, each sentence will, I am sure, prove a brilliant 
jewel in the diadem of our historic past. 

New England has had her Winsor, her Bancroft, her 
Swinton, and her Fiske; Virginia has had her Bruce, her 
Brown, her Stanard, and her Tyler, and then there is one 
other. In introducing him to you, I liken myself to the 
pigmy who sang the praises of Gulliver, for the honor it gives 
me is commensurate with the magnitude of the occasion and 
the celebrity of the speaker. He really needs no introduc- 
tion, but I shall avail myself of this opportunity to render 
my humble encomium, for he is one of the few left of those 
gallant young artillerists who contributed so much of blood 
and valor to make the name of Lee immortal. Nor was he, 
by any means, the least conspicuous among them. The vet- 
erans of that army remember him as a boy, but not by any- 
thing he has said about himself. For half a century now 
he has been in the public eye — always champion of Virginia's 
ideals — the loving chronicler, student, and historian, in prose 
and poetry, of her peerless past. 

She has been his idol, and the love of her has been the 
inspiration of his good right arm, his brilliant tongue and 
pen. And now he stands before us a unique and lovable, 
but almost solitary, figure, in our social and literary life. 



His career has been one of singular unselfishness and de- 
votion. In his youth, he was a rare combination of boyish 
enthusiasm and impetuosity, coupled with the courage, the 
caution, and the fortitude of age. In mature manhood, he 
measured up to the full expectations of those who knew him 
as a boy, and in age he presents the rare spectacle of the 
freshness, the vigor, the lovableness, of boyhood, after expe- 
riences well calculated to destroy all these. 

Beginning life at old Hampton Academy, under the 
gallant Col. John B. Gary, this youth Avon friends who never 
forgot him through all iife's vicissitudes, and such of them 
as survive still rally to do him honor on every occasion when 
they may, for they love him now as they did then, nor has he 
forgotten them. A mere boy in the Confederate Army, his 
companions were of Titanic mould— Pegram, Pelham, and 
Haskell. They were a band of brothers, all engaged in noble 
self-sacrifice for a cause, and he was the beloved companion 
and the peer of any of them. They were taken. He was left 
to consecrate himself to the loving task of preserving their 
memory. His pen has immortalized them in words of 
moving eloquence, never once reminding us that the fame of 
their heroic deeds is but his own. 

Behold one who delights in the society of the great, and 

in whom the great delight, yet was never sycophant nor 

sybarite. A student, yet not a pedant. A book-worm that 

loves companionship. A wit that never fails to flash, but 

never sacrificed the substance of plain common sense to the 

froth of frivolity. A brilliant satirist, never cynical, and 

with a heart too true to sting in wantonness. A lover of his 

fellowman. without the weakness so common to that class. 

A lover of God, without arrogating the right to censorious- 

ness. and ever remembering that "the greatest of these is 

charity." And. withal, an eminently practical man of affairs, 

with a nature, nevertheless, exuberantly sentimental, from 

which wells up. from time to time, a wealth of poetic fancy 

and utterance that has charmed thousands and endeared his 

pen to us all. Such a nature is indeed rare. It could not 



exist without a guiding and inspiring faith, and in his love 
for Virginia may be found the source of his deeds and utter- 
ances. His throbbing heart has burst into song and story 
concerning the deeds of his companions and the story of his 
native State with the soul-stirring tone of nature's songsters, 
to which his fellow-citizens have ever listened and been en- 
tranced. No matter whether he has told the story of John 
Smith, or of Spotswood, or of Washington, or of Marshall, 
or of Lee — no matter the century in which his scene was 
laid — his song has been of Virginia, and pitched in the key 
of a worshiper at a shrine. It has ever stirred the noblest 
impulse in the breast of the hearer, be he friend or foe, and it 
has gone on until now there is not in all this State a citizen 
better known, or more honored, or more beloved. 

And so, let him compose Virginia's verse, his bardic lyre 
attune, like those "sky-larks in the dawn of years, the poets 
of the morn." 

Allow me to introduce Colonel W. Gordon McCabe. 

THE FIRST UNIVERSITY IN AMERICA. 

Ladies of the "Society of Colonial Dames in the State of Vir- 
ginia" and fellow Virginians: 

About this historic spot, where we gather to-day to com- 
memorate a great and beneficent enterprise, which yet failed 
of fruition because of a sudden stroke of adverse fate — all 
of us still eager, despite the lapse of well nigh three centuries, 
to yield becoming meed of admiration and abiding reverence 
for the enlightened and gallant spirits who conceived this 
enterprise in wisdom and fostered it with noble generosity — 
cluster countless memories that must stir the blood of every 
Virginian "to the manner born" — memories of endurance 
stern, and splendid constancy and valor — memories more gra- 
cious, touched ever with the glamor of romance — and alas! 
as we must specially recall to-day, memories fraught with 
mournful glory and charged with tragic gloom. 



As we stand here upon this towering bluff where rises in 
august purity of line this stately shaft and, gazing far a-field 
across the shining river, drink in the beauty of the historic 
lowland landscape, touched faintly with a luminous haze that 
heightens rather than veils the charm and witchery of its 
appealing loveliness — cold indeed must be tha heart, I re- 
peat, that does not thrill at the thought that we stand on 
ground made consecrate by noble blood nobly shed and glori- 
fied by deeds no time can ever touch. 

Yet are these sterner memories softened by the more 
gracious visions of a later time, that rise before the inner 
eye in gazing on this scene — visions of those jocund days 
when bluff Virginia squires "kept alight in hearts of gold" 
by song and hunt and open board the brave traditions of 
Yorkshire and of Devon, and in their simple, high-bred lives 
proved them worthy of the goodly heritage bequeathed them 
by the daring few who first had won and held the land that 
bore the name of England's "Virgin Queen." 

Aye! fair, in sooth, the setting for the pious task we 
reverently essay this da}\ 

Yonder to the West, within the radius of a scant league, 
suffused in golden mist lies "Wilton," the stately manor- 
house of Colonel William Randolph, son of Colonel William 
Randolph of "Turkey Island," and father of that Ann Ran- 
dolph, most radiant beauty of her time, who after much 
exasperating coquetry finally gave her hand to Colonel Ben- 
jamin Harrison, of "Brandon"— "Nancy Wilton," as she was 
familiarly known to kinsfolk and intimates — who still 
smiles archly down upon us from the painter's canvas with 
patch on chin and powder on hair, the very pearl of "Co- 
lonial Dames." 

Scarce a mile away is "Varina," so called because the 
sweet-scented tobacco grown there was rated as worthy rival 
of the fragrant "Varinas" of Old Spain— the home of Master 
John Rolfe and his Indian princess-bride, Pocahontas, in the 
first years of their happy wedded life, and, long after, the 
scholarly retreat of William Stith, grandson of Colonel Wil- 



liam Randolph, Oxford graduate and President of the Col- 
lege of William and Mary, whose erudite yet graphic 
History of the First Discovery and Settlement of Virginia 
remains after the lapse of more than a century and a half 
one of our prime authorities for the genesis of the colony 
and its gradual development up to the dissolution of the 
"Virginia Company." 

Eastward, only a few miles lower down, we plainly see 
"Curls Neck," so called from the "curls" made there by "the 
King's River," as the James was then called, also owned in 
chief measure by William Randolph, of Turkey Island, 
great-grandfather of "John Randolph of Roanoke," and son 
of that William Randolph who was the common ancestor of 
three of the most illustrious men in all Anglo-Saxon annals — 
Thomas Jefferson, John Marshall and Robert Edward Lee. 
At "Curls" too was the home of Virginia's first glorious 
"Rebel," Nathaniel Bacon the younger who in 1676 led the 
Virginia yeoman as they flamed out into revolt against the 
arbitrary exactions of Sir William Berkeley and yielded up 
his brave young life (though not on field of battle) in de- 
fence of those principles that men of his breed and blood 
had wrested from John at Runnymede — principles identical 
with those for which just a century later another Virginia 
"Rebel," George Washington, unsheathed his trenchant blade 
and for which, more than eighty years after decisive victory 
on the plains of Yorktown had transformed Washington 
from "dire Rebel" into "Pater Patriae," a third immortal 
Virginia "Rebel," Robert Edward Lee, with the point of his 
stainless sword wrote the name of Virginia and of her 
Southern sisters afresh in the very "Rubric of Freedom." 

And just back of Turkey Island, lies yonder "Malvern 
Hill," called after the lovely "Malvern Hills" that form the 
gracious boundary-line between Hereford and Worcestshire 
in the motherland beyond the seas — "Malvern Hill" and, 
hard by, "White Oak Swamp" and all those stricken fields 
which Lee and Jackson and the "thin gray line" have made 
forever historic by the splendor of their deeds. 



But time would fail me to make even barest allusion to 
all the places that lie so close about us, whose names still 
weave their magic spell, "whispering the enchantment" '(in 
Matthew Arnold's exquisite phrase) of a by-gone time — each 
and all, from "Coxen-Dale" to "Drewry's Bluff," pulsing with 
memories of our mother's great renown in three momentous 
wars and attesting the instant readiness of her people down 
through all the centuries, in obedience to "the one clear call" 
of conscience, to give their all without grudge and without 
stint whenever freedom is at stake. 

Yet glorious as are the crowding memories of the scene, 
to-day our chief concern is centred on the spot whereon we 
stand— site of the ancient town this shaft and tablet mark 
and of the noble enterprise that pure religion and undefiled 
purposed to dedicate to the service and the glory of Almighty 
God and that wisest statesmanship had planned for the 
broad upbuilding of the "budding state." 

Here was "Dale's Town," as 'twas called of "common 
folk," despite its royal name of "Henricopolis," or "Cittie of 
Henricus," in honor of "the expectancy and rose" of England's 
"fair state," Henry Prince of Wales, son of James the First 
and grandson of the beautiful and unfortunate Queen of 
Scots, who, had he lived to reign, had surely averted from his 
own kingdom at home and from Virginia as well the many 
tragic vicissitudes that were destined soon to shake the very 
fabric of the whole realm. 

As most of our Virginia histories make even scant allu- 
sion to him, surely it becomes us this day to pause a moment 
at his name. 

Though "untimely death." as Shakespeare terms it, 
snatched him away ere he had rounded out his eighteenth 
year, he had already become the idol of the nation by reason 
of his high martial spirit, his extraordinary proficiency in all 
manly accomplishments (for he was a daring horseman, skil- 
ful in "tossing the pike" and "putting the bar," a crack 
player at tennis and golf, as well as an expert archer) , and, 
in chiefest measure, because of his outspoken frankness that 



contrasted so sharply with the subtle duplicity of his crafty 
father. From early boyhood he was grave and thoughtful — 
precocious far beyond his years in his intimate knowledge of 
military and naval matters, strict in his attendance on public 
worship, and ever bore himself, we are told, with princely 
dignity. 

In a thoroughly corrupt court, he would suffer no coarse 
stories nor profanity in his presence, yet was he endowed 
with a fund of quiet humor and possessed of a nimble wit. 

Those about him loved him above all for his generous 
and fearless loyalty to such of his friends as lay under the 
jealous displeasure of his narrow-minded father. 

With Sir Walter Raleigh, the most versatile genius of 
his time — brilliant soldier, who had won marked distinction 
on the fields of Jarnac and Moncontour fighting as a volun- 
teer under Coligny on the side of the Huguenots— daring 
seaman, the peer of Drake and Frobisher and Lord Thomas 
Howard and picturesquely dubbed by Edmund Spenser "the 
Shepherd of the Ocean"— presently to be desperately wounded 
while leading the van in the "War-spite" as the fleet forced 
the entrance to the bay and captured Cadiz— chemist, phys- 
icist, cartographer, archaeologist, statesman, poet and man- 
of-letters who could hold his own at the "Mermaid Tavern" 
with Shakespeare and Marlowe and "rare Ben Jonson"— 
with Ealeigh, "Admirable Crichton" of his age, the young 
Prince was on terms of intimate friendship and regardless 
of consequences to himself often visited him when confined 
in "the Tower," once declaring in an outburst of boyish con- 
tempt, "Methinks my father is the only man who would 
keep such a bird in a cage." 

He had, in truth, nothing in common with that weak, 
treacherous, and pusillanimous creature, James Stuart, but his 
whole being throbbed responsive to the old Viking blood that 
coursed through his veins, coming to him from his mother 
Anne of Denmark. 

Fired by Ealeigh's enthusiastic schemes of colonization, 
he not only gladly became the first patron of the "Virginia 



10 



Company," but, as our historians should note, he was in an 
especial sense the patron of Dale who had been in close 
attendance upon him from his infancy to his ninth year. 

At the time of his birth, Dale was in the Dutch mili- 
tary service, but almost at once the "States General" sent the 
doughty old soldier and sailor over to Scotland to become 
a member of the retinue of the young Prince then in ward at 
Sterling, and in that capacity Dale served for nearly eight 
years. 

Thus, there grew up on the little lad's side a deep af- 
fection for that stern yet kindly veteran of "blood and iron," 
while the latter cherished for his young master a devotion 
that was well-nigh romantic in its passionate intensity. 

When the Prince was in his ninth year, Dale, who was 
highly esteemed 'by the "States General," was summoned 
back to his military duties in Holland, but Henry never 
forgot him, and when at the age of sixteen he was created 
Prince of Wales, June 4th, 1G10— the very day, as chance 
would have it, that gloomy news came of the desperate con- 
dition of affairs in - this colony — he at once sought and ob- 
tained from the Dutch ambassadors (who had come over to 
England to attend his investiture) a promise to send back to 
him his trusty old servant for service in Virginia. 

Dale having received leave of absence from the States 
General joyfully obeyed the summons of his young master, 
arriving in England towards the end of January, 1611. There 
he remained only a few weeks— just long enough to confer 
with the members of the "Quarter Court" of the "Virginia 
Company" as to his instructions, and, incidentally, to marry 
Elizabeth Throckmorton, cousin of that other Elizabeth 
Throckmorton who had married Raleigh. In March, he 
sailed from Land's End. 

The colony was, indeed, in a desperate plight, decimated 
by fever, scurvy, and other diseases. Sir Thomas Gates had 
gone back to England (July 25th, 1610), but only for a time, 
to obtain necessary supplies and to urge that more colonists 
dp. sent out at once. 

11 



Lord De La Warr — the first to be commissioned "Lord 
Governour and Captaine Generall of Virginia" for life — a 
pious, sagacious, and prudent executive, whose valor in the 
Low Countries had proved him worthy scion of that Eoger 
De La Warr who had taken John King of France prisoner 
on the field of Poictiers— Lord De La Warr had been 
stricken with malarial fever and, with life trembling in the 
balance, had sailed away, much against his will, with Argall 
in April (1611), leaving but 150 survivors at Jamestown. 
He himself was destined never to return. 

He and Dale passed each other on the seas, the latter 
arriving at Jamestown about the same time that the Lord 
Governor reached England. 

Gates on reaching England had but confirmed the evil 
tidings that had reached the "Virginia Company," and De 
La Warr on his arrival found the Council gloomily weigh- 
ing the question whether it were not best to "abandon the 
action" (i. e., the enterprise) and recall the gaunt remnant 
still left in Virginia. 

But ill as he was } De La Warr's gallant spirit remained 
unbroken and he besought the Council, having put their 
hand to the plough, not to turn back, declaring with gen- 
erous warmth that he would adventure "all his fortunes upon 
the prosecution of the Plantation." Stout old Gates vigor- 
ously supported him, attesting "with a solemn and sacred 
oath," say the "Minutes," that Virginia was "one of the good- 
liest countries under the sunne." 

Not a few of us there are, I think, that after three cen- 
turies still hold to Gates' opinion, and it is pleasant to know 
that some of the De La Warr stanch stock is yet "to the 
fore" in our "Old Dominion" and that his family name of 
West is perpetuated to this day in West Point on the York 
(at first called the "Delaware"), while "Shirley," the noble 
old manor-house of the Carters on the James, preserves for 
us the name of his wife, fair Mistress "Cissellye" Sherley, 
daughter of Sir Thomas Sherley, whom he married in 1596. 

12 



Dale, titularly "High Marshall" but virtually clothed 
with all the powers of Governor, sailed from Land's End, as 
we have seen, on March 27th, 1611, and, after a safe voyage, 
touching at Kicoughtan to put the colonists there to work 
planting corn, sailed up the river and reached Jamestown on 
May 29th. 

He was soon to be followed by Gates whose title had 
been changed from "Lieutenant Govemour" to "Lieutenant 
Generall" and who was, of course, his superior. 

But it is to be noted by those who read between the lines 
of the records that even after the arrival of Gates Dale 
seems to have had with the former's full consent an abso- 
lutely free hand in ihe active direction of affairs, for these 
two sturdy soldiers had been close comrades in the Low 
Countries, campaigning together as simple captains in the 
English contingent employed in the Dutch service and un- 
doubtedly Dale's was the more energetic and masterful spirit 
of the two, though Gates himself was a very able man. 

May I pause just a moment here to observe in passing 
that Professor John Fiske is utterly wrong in asserting, as 
he does in his delightful "Old Virginia and Her Neighbors," 
that Gates was in Virginia with Dale only "for a small part 
of the time." Gates was here for nearly three out of the 
five years of Dale's service, arriving in June, 1611 and not 
sailing for home until March, 1614. 

Fresh from the records, I have however found so many 
mistakes in the majority of histories touching this time that 
it seems rather invidious to single out Prof. Fiske's blunder. 
Straightway on his arrival at Jamestown Dale's trained 
soldier's eye told him at a glance that Jamestown, both from 
a strategic and sanitary point of view, was an unfit place for 
the permanent seat of government. In those rude, empiric 
times there was no Colonel Gorgas with his marvellous scien- 
tific sanitation and owing to the surrounding "fennes" and 
marshes the place was yearly scourged by deadly malarial 
fevers, while its proximity to the fine roadstead that gave safe 

13 



anchorage to sea-going ships rendered it specially vulnerable 
to the fleets of Spain. 

It was, no doubt, this last consideration that weighed 
most heavily with him, for Spain was ever his "bete-noire" 
and every Spaniard his natural enemy — a veritable "child of 
the Devil"— and, like Sir Richard Grenville in Tennyson's 
stirring ballad of "The Revenge,''' 1 the stout old seaman-sol- 
dier could boast that he had "never turned his back on Don or 
Devil yet." 

He knew and all England knew as well (though James 
Stuart in his eagerness for "the Spanish match" pretended 
to doubt) that Philip of Spain viewed with growing jealousy 
and alarm the English settlement in Virginia which, once 
firmly established, must prove a menacing naval base for 
harrying his rich possessions in the West Indies and on the 
"Spanish Main." 

His decision once made, Dale's energy was, indeed, phe- 
nomenal. In little more than a fortnight of his arrival, he 
sailed up "the King's River" in June to search for a more 
salubrious site for the seat of government and finally se- 
lected the spot to be known popularly thereafter as "Dale's 
Town," which he describes as "a high land invironed with the 
Mayne River, near to an Indian Towne called Arsahattocke — a 
convenient strong, healthie and sweet seate to plant the new 
Towne in, from whence might be no more remove of the 
principall seate." 

Returning at once to Jamestown to superintend person- 
ally the necessary preparations for building, he came back to 
this "healthie and sweet seate" about the middle of Septem- 
ber (having left' Jamestown on a flood-tide, a day and half 
before), bringing with him 350 picked men who were not 
only to build the new town and, later, to till the soil, but 
who, above all, were to garrison what then (mark!) was the 
furthest Western outpost of the Anglo-\Saxon world! 

Having with his customary energy and foresight al- 
ready prepared, as I have said, the greater part of the ma- 



14 



terial needed, within the extraordinarily brief space of ten 
days he strongly fortified seven English acres of ground. 

''This towne," writes Captain Ralph Hamor in a rich 
and varied orthography (that, like Byron's prosody at Har- 
row, is "such as pleases God")— "This towne is situated upon 
a necke of a plaine risinge land, three parts invironed by the 
Maine River; the necke of land well impaled makes it like an 
lie; it hathe three streets of well- framed houses, a handsome 
Church, the foundation of a better laid (to bee built of 
Bricke), besides store-houses, watch-houses and such like. 
Upon the verge of the River, there are five houses, wherein 
live the honester (i. e., more honorable) sort of people, as 
Farmers in England, and they keepe continually Centinell for 
the townes securitie." 

Rich corn-lands across the river to the South and West 
were also impaled and strongly guarded by block-houses and 
forts, while Dale further strengthened the town against any 
sudden foray of wily savage from the North by cutting a 
deep fosse across the narrow neck of land already impaled, 
which fosse was called "Dutch Gap,"' because it was of the 
same type as those he had been accustomed to construct in his 
campaigns in Holland. 

You must bear in mind that when Dale was thus busy in 
building and fortifying, Prince Henry was yet alive and well, 
eager to further to the utmost the moral welfare and mate- 
rial development of the Plantations, and Dale, who was 
rigidly truthful, took a pardonable pride in writing to him 
in the middle of January, 1012, within four months of the 
time when the first timbers were laid, that he had "made 
Henricus much better and of more worth than all the work 
ever since the Colony began, therein done.'' 

One pleasant human touch that goes straight to our 
heart, there is in the midst of his quasi-official letter— when 
the rugged old soldier, who evidently remembered his young 
patron's fondness for "the noble and royal sport of falconry" 
and who himself, like Hamlet, "knew a hawk from a hand- 



15 



saw," tells him that he has sent him as a little present "a 
falcon and a tassall." 

Alas, early in November of this same year (1612), the 
young Prince was suddenly stricken with typhoid fever and 
passed away within a few days. 

So great was the dismay occasioned by this unlooked-for 
and appalling stroke both here in the colony and at "home" 
where he was not only "the bright star," as he was termed, of 
the "Virginia Company," but the hope of the whole Puritan 
party, that it is no exaggeration to declare that Virginia came 
within an ace of being abandoned at once and forever. 

Even Dale himself whose whole heart was bound up in 
the colony was so crushed by the unforseen blow that for a 
time his own nerve gave way under the blighting stroke. 

His letter to Mocket, on receiving the tragic news, can 
scarcely be read by even the coldest after the lapse of three 
hundred years with undimmed eyes: "My glorious master," 
he writes, "is gone, that would have ennamelled with his 
Favours the Labours I undertake for God's cause and his 
immortall Honour. He was the great Captaine of our Israel, 
the hope to have builded up this heavenly new Jerusalem. 
He interred, I think the whole fabric of this business fell 
into his grave: for most men's forward (at least seeming so) 
desires are quenched, and Virginia stands in desperate 

hazard.'''' 

But it was only for a brief space that he was so shaken. 
Like Caesar he had "wept," yet was his "ambition" of 
that "sterner stuff" of which Mark Antony speaks, bending 
over Caesar dead, and resolutely putting aside his poignant 
personal grief he redoubled his efforts for the saving of the 
colony— his dauntless spirit discerning in each new diffi- 
culty but fresh device. 

When news came to him that men of weight at home, 
some of them high in the councils of the Company, were, as 
we have seen, seriously meditating the abandonment of his 
loved Virginia, he bursts out in his rough soldier-fashion in 
a letter to Sir Thomas Smyth : "Let me tell you all at home 

16 



this one thing, and I pray you remember it: if you give over 
this country and loose it, you with your wisdoms will leap 
such a gudgeon as our state hath not done the like since they 
lost the Kingdome of Fraunce." 

"Honor, honor, eternal honor" to the memory of the 
stout-hearted old hero! 

We native-born Virginians, as you all know, are often 
twitted by the envious, not so blessed in the matter of na- 
tivity, with what they are pleased to term our "overweening 
state-pride." But listen to Dale (in this same letter) who 
like Ulysses of old had "seen many men and many cities" 
and who was the very embodiment of robust common-sense: 
"I protest unto you by the faith of an honest man, the more 
I range this country, the more I admire it. I have seen the 
best countries in Europe; I protest unto you, before the 
Living God, put them all together, this country will be the 
equivalent unto them, if it be inhabitant with good people." 

There spoke the seer, as well as the hardy pioneer un- 
willing to yield his undertaking ! 

Of Dale's untiring activities during the critical period 
from 1611 to 1616, I cannot speak adequately within the 
limits imposed by a popular address, for in all soberness the 
story of his career is the story of the colony itself for those 
eventful years. 

Next to John Smith, he was, I hold, the ablest soldier 
and the most sagacious administrator that came out to Vir- 
ginia in the Seventeenth Century. 

He found the colony well-nigh at its last gasp and left 
it prosperous and confident. 

He was a stern disciplinarian, but he himself yielded the 
same scrupulous obedience to his superiors that he rigidly 
exacted from those under him. He was a terror to drones and 
evil-doers, but that way lay salvation for the struggling 
Plantation. When his men at Henrico restless under his 
iron discipline ran away to the Indians, and, after basking 
awhile in listless laziness, slipped back within the palisades, 
he promptly shot them, in relentless adherence to the savage 

17 



code, "written in blood," that uniformly obtained in the Low 
Countries. 

For this he has been harshly criticized by some historians, 
but these latter were probably ignorant of the fact that he 
was only rigidly carrying out his instructions as contained in 
the "Laws Divine, Moral and Martial," compiled by William 
Strachey, Secretary of the Company, (at least in part) from 
the Dutch Army Regulations and sent over by Sir Thomas 
Smyth for his guidance — a code repugnant, indeed, to our 
times, but, be it remembered, the very same that the "Iron 
Duke," two centuries later, pitilessly followed in his im- 
mortal "Peninsular" campaign. 

Like so many of the valorous captains of "the spacious 
times of great Elizabeth" — Richard Grenville and Philip Sid- 
ney and Lord Thomas Howard — his whole being was satu- 
rated with a deep, unquestioning piety and he was as keen 
in disputation over some perplexing text of Scripture as he 
was alert in handling broadsword or petronel. 

In the pauses of his strenuous life here at "Henricopolis" 
•it was his chief pleasure to row T across the river in the evening 
to "Coxen-Dale" and discuss some nice point in theology with 
godly "Master Whitaker" who had come out from England 
with him as his chaplain in the good ship "Prosperous." 

To sum up: under his administration the Indians had 
been pacified, the population well-nigh trebled and all the 
land lay in such smiling plenty that when he was summoned 
home — presently to command the East India fleet — John 
Kolfe wrote to the King: "Sir Thomas Dale's worth and 
name in managing the affairs of this Colony will outlast the 
standing of this Plantation." 

Once again, as a Virginian passionately devoted to his 
native state, I stand uncovered and reverently salute this 
great captain and administrator as one of the most illustrious 
of all "Virginia Worthies." 

In the spring of 1616, Dale sailed for England in the 
"Treasurer" after five years (to use his own homely words) 
"of the hardest taske that ever I undertooke and by the bless- 

18 



inge of God have with pour meanes Left the Collonye in 
great prosperitie and peace contrary to man's expectation." 

With him went Master John Rolfe, "an honest gentle- 
man and of good behaviour," and his young wife ("Poca- 
hontas" by pet-name, "Matoaka" by birth, and "Rebecca" by 
baptism), very proud of her lusty infant son Thomas and 
along with them twelve young Indians of both sexes "to be 
educated in England" — a visit intimately associated with the 
beneficent scheme that Sandys and other broad-minded mem- 
bers of the Company were to develop, and one fraught with 
far-reaching possibilities touching both secondary and higher 
education in Virginia. 

You all recall, of course, the wondrous reception accorded 
Pocahontas in England by both court and people. Lady De 
La Warr, wife of Virginia's titular "Lord Governour and 
Captaine Generall," presented her to the Queen who because 
of her eldest-born, Prince Henry, "so loved and early lost," 
took an especial interest in the young "Virginia Princess," as 
she was called — while the great ladies of the court, the Coun- 
tesses of Bedford and Sussex and Nottingham, following the 
royal lead vied with each other in their cordial welcome of 
the gentle and dignified "Emperours daughter." Night after 
night routs and receptions were given in her honor and the 
common folk crowded about her chair at the entrance to the 
play-house, as she alighted and entered in company with 
Lord and Lady De La Warr to witness the performance of 
Ben Jonson's "Christmas His Mash." 

"La Belle Sauvage," in brief, became "the rage of the 
town," and Purchas, who was present at a great reception 
given for her by Dr. King, Bishop of London ("with festivall 
state," he says, "and pompe beyond what I have seen in his 
great hospitalitie to other ladies"), declares that she "car- 
ried herself as the daughter of a King" and adds that she 
was "accordingly respected not only by the Company (i. e., the 
"Virginia Company"), but of divers particular persons of 
Honour in the. hopeful zeal by her to advance Christianities 
It is in these last words that we find the germ of the "budding 

19 



hope" that gradually grew into the fixed purpose of found- 
ing "a colledge" in Virginia for the conversion and education 
of the Indians — a purpose, I repeat, that had surely flowered 
into glorious fruition, had it not been nipped (in Shakespe- 
rian phrase) by the "untimely frost" of that woful tragedy 
of 1622. 

Far more significant, indeed, than any social triumphs 
(which were sure to be showered upon her under such ex- 
alted patronage) was this "hopeful zeal," with which the 
gentle "Virginia Princess" inspired those about her — that is, 
those of the godlier sort— a "zeal" not diminished by their 
profound pity for /the fate of the poor Indian children 
brought over with her who unused to the rigors of the harsh 
English climate faded away one after another though gently 
cared for under the kindly roof-tree of Sir Thomas Smyth in 
JPhilpott Lane. 

And this "zeal" naturally became only more intensified 
by the death within a year (March, 1617) of Pocahontas 
herself (poor, wistful little figure!), who unexpectedly passed 
away at Gravesend on the eve of setting sail for Virginia, 
"having," as Purchas tells us, "given great demonstration of 
her Christian sinceritie as the fruits of Virginia conversion, 
leaving here a godly memory." 

No doubt she herself in her half-shy, half-direct man- 
ner had spoken with the King about this matter that lay so 
close to her heart, for within a few days of her burial James 
issued his "special grant and license" in a circular letter to 
the two archbishops of the realm, instructing them to direct 
the bishops of all the dioceses within their respective juris- 
dictions to make collections "for the erecting of some 
churches and schools for ye education of ye children of those 
Barbarians in Virginia" — the funds when collected to be 
turned over to the Treasurer of the "Virginia Company." 

This may be justly regarded as the real inception of the 
nobler and broader enterprise. 

It was the earliest of several like educational efforts made 
during the three or four years immediately succeeding the 

20 



death of Pocahontas and as there is much confusion and, 
indeed, contradiction in most of the histories as to the order 
of these projected foundations, I crave your patience while I 
give succinctly and in barest outline the chronological se- 
quence of each. The outlines I may fill in at a later time, as I 
have a mass of notes bearing on the subject taken direct from 
the records. But this is neither the time nor place for their 
presentation. 

The "Colledge," as I have already indicated, was pri- 
marily designed to evangelize the Indians, but the project, 
once it was taken up by "the Company," gradually grew to 
be more comprehensive, with the result that Sir Edwin San- 
dys and his adherents (who at that time dominated the af- 
fairs of the Company) set to work to devise a systematic 
scheme of 'education for Virginia leading up from free- 
school to college and, in further time, to university. This 
was, indeed, looking far ahead and the execution of the plan 
in its completeness was obviously dependent on the con- 
tingency of securing the necessary funds in the future, but 
the men who evolved the scheme were hard-headed "men of 
affairs'' who believed fully in its ultimate success. 

The first step, then, in their matured scheme contem- 
plated the founding of the "Colledge" designed not only "for 
training Indian children in the true knowledge of God and 
in some useful employment" but also for the education of 
the sons of the white planters who (as stated later in the 
"Minutes" as to the "East Indie Schoole") "through want 
thereof have been hitherto constrained to their great costes to 
send their children from thence to be taught." 

Good schools were also to be established exclusively for 
white children as the revenues from the endowment in- 
creased or as money should come in from donations and be- 
quests. 

The "Minutes" of the "Quarter Court" prove that the 
idea of the ultimate university was never absent from the 
thoughts of the "committee" charged with the execution of 
the undertaking, and had the comprehensive plan (embracing 

21 



manual instruction for the Indians) been successfully car- 
ried through (and remember it came within an ace of achieve- 
ment), the aim of Armstrong's "Hampton Institute''' and of 
Jefferson's University would have been anticipated by more 
than two centuries. 

I. For the establishing of the college (and, in time, of 
the university) the collections 'amounted early in 1619 to 
£1500, equal in our modern currency to roughly $40,000. To 
this "the Company" added (I quote the exact words of the 
"Minutes") : "Ten thousand acres of land for the University 
to he planted at Henrico and one thousand acres for the Col- 
ledge for the conversion of Infidels^; and, in April of the next 
year, Master George Thorpe "of His Majestie's Privie Cham-, 
ber and one of his Councill for Virginia" (whom John 
Smith calls "that worthy religious gentleman") was sent out 
to be "Deputy" (or Manager) for the "Colledge lands" which 
lay on both sides of the river. 

Though "the Company" was ordered to erect the college 
"at once," Sandys and his colleagues like the wise and prudent 
men that they were resolved to make haste slowly. 

Before they began actual work on the college buildings, 
they rightly wished to feel certain of a stable endowment 
fund. The 11,000 acres of rich bottom-lands about Henrico, 
already given by "the Company" for establishing the college 
and university, would constitute, given a reasonable time 
for proper cultivation, a magnificent endowment fund, for 
there grew the finest tobaccos and the cereal crops were al- 
most sure to be abundant. So, as we read in the "Minutes," 
"it was conceived fittest to forbear building the Colledge 
awhile, and to begin with the money we have to provide 
Annuall revennue, and out of that to begin the erection of 
said Colledge." 

Meanwhile, farm-laborers, brick-makers, carpenters, ar- 
tisans of all sorts, were sent out and put at once to work. 
Gifts, too, of various kinds had already begun to flow in — 
gifts of money, of a communion service for the college chapel, 
of books for the college library — all from modest donors, 

22 



who (unlike certain modern philanthropists thai shall be 
nameless) "desyre to remayne unknown and unsought after." 

II.- The next handsome donation, in order, was a gift of 
£550 from some unknown benefactor who at the beginning 
of February, 1620, wrote to the Treasurer of the Company 
offering this amount "for the educatinge and bringing upp 
Infidells Children in Christianytie," signing the letter "Dust 
and Ashes." 

The letter was referred on February '2nd to a committee, 
and three weeks later the actual gift was made in a manner 
highly dramatic and calculated to arouse the liveliest curi- 
osity. 

When the "Quarter Court" met on February 22nd, they 
saw upon the session-table in the room a box addressed to 
-Sir Edwin Saudis the faithful Treasurer of Virginia"' which 
(I follow the "Minutes") "hee acquainted them was brought 
unto him by a man of good fashion, who would neither tell 
him his name nor from whence hee came." The superscrip- 
tion of the letter and that of the box were compared, the 
writing found to be identical, the box opened, and therein 
was found in a stout canvas-bag the £550 (equal about $14,000 
in modern currency) in newly-minted gold. "The Southamp- 
ton Association" added £150 to the donation thus made by 
the diffident "Dust and Ashes" and it was forthwith resolved 
to establish at "Southampton Hundred" a school for white 
children, said school (mark you !) to be "dependent on the Col- 
ledge" and under its control. 

III. The third donation for the building of a church or 
the establishment of a school, was a fund collected by the 
Rev. Patrick Copeland from among "the gentlemen and mar- 
iners" of the "Royal J a men" (of which ship Copeland was 
chaplain) while she lay at the Cape of Good Hope on her 
return voyage to England from India. 

Copeland having acquainted the "Company" on his 
arrival in England as to amount and purpose of this contri- 
bution, the committee after discussion "conceaved . . . that 
there was a greater want of a Schoole than of Churches," as 



23 



there was already a goodly number of the latter in the Plan- 
tation. They therefore resolved to establish with this fund 
(later increased by other contributions) a school at "Charles 
Cittie" (the modern "City Point"), "to be called in honour 
of the donors the ''East Indie Schooled " 

I ask your especial attention to the resolutions adopted 
as to this school at a meeting of the committee on Tuesday, 
October 30th, 1621: "They (the committee) therefore con- 
ceaved it most fitt to resolve for the erectinge of a publique 
free schoole w'ch being for the education of children and 
groundinge of them in the principles of religion, Civility of 
life and humane learninge, served to carry with it the great- 
est waight and highest consequence unto the Plantations as 
that whereof both Church and Commonwealth take their 
originall foundation and happie estate." 

Here in his homely "Minute" we have presented to us 
with pregnant terseness the true aim of all real education — 
the essential things that must be held fast to in the training 
of youth, if we would have them become good and useful 
citizens — all stated with a direct simplicity that is in re- 
freshing contrast to the long-winded platitudes of those who 
(in the argot of this XXth Century) pride themselves on 
the hideous name of "Educators" and who mouth their 
banalities as to "The Eelation of Education to the State" with 
a profundity of pinchbeck "wisdom" as if one inquired of 
an oracle of God. 

But to prove beyond successful cavil that the committee 
proposed that these schools should be feeders to the college 
at Henrico, which should gradually raise its standards and 
thus pave the way for the university, I pray you listen 
closely to another paragraph of this "Minute": "It was also 
thought fitt that this as a Collegiate or free schoole should 
have dependence upon the Colledge in Virginia, w'ch shall be 
made capable to receave Schollers from the Schoole into such 
Scollerships and fellowshipps as the said Colledge shall be 
endowed withall for the advancement of schollers as they arise 
by degrees and desertes in learninge." 

24 



It is a pleasant thought that we owe this fund indirectly 
to Dale, who had kindled Copeland's active interest in Vir- 
ginia while the latter was serving under him in the East 
Indies, where the valorous old soldier-sailor fell on heroic 
sleep at Masulipitan on the Coromandel Coast in August, 
1619. When Queen Mary of England lay a-dying, her pride 
broken by the loss of Calais to the French, she said to her 
waiting-women, we are told, "When I die, Calais will be 
found written on my heart." So, in different and nobler 
fashion, was it with Dale. Virginia was ever the darling 
thought of his dauntless old heart. Ear away under Eastern 
skies, that heart was ever in the West, and in one of his last 
letters, penned at Jacastra in the summer of 1619, he says 
wistfully: "I shall be glad to hear how Virginia prospers." 

Quite aware that I lay myself open to FalstaiFs retort to 
Prince Hal, "O, thou hast damnable iteration," I repeat that 
the ''Minutes of the Virginia Company," as well as other 
documents and letters of the time, prove beyond the shadow 
of a doubt the truth of my contention — that Sandys, assisted 
by the sagacious counsels of Southampton and Nicholas Fer- 
rar the younger, worked out a well-devised and well-rounded 
scheme for graded education in the colony from elementary 
school to university, the baldest outlines of which I can only 
sketch in this address, reserving the details for presentation 
elsewhere. 

This systematic scheme could not have been entrusted to 
abler hands nor could there have been a happier combina- 
tion of practical "business sense," genuine culture and high 
educational ideals than we find in the small group of men 
charged with the framing and execution of the plan. 

Of this group it is noteworthy that Sir Edwin Sandys 
and Sir Dudley Digges were Oxford men who had carried 
off university honors and that the Earl of Southampton and 
the younger Ferrar Avere graduates of Cambridge; while asso- 
ciated with them were such "merchant princes" ("merchant- 
adventurers," they called themselves) as John Ferrar. Deputy 
Treasure]- of "the Company," and Sir John Wolstenholme, 

25 



both of whom were distinguished among their fellows, far 
beyond their wealth, for their hard common-sense and admin- 
istrative ability. 

Of these Sandys is unquestionably the dominant figure, 
not alone as regards this special scheme and the general con- 
duct of Virginia affairs, but in the broader field of the great 
struggle for civil and constitutional liberty that had even 
then begun, though as yet under the surface, in English 
politics. Scholar, author, orator, statesman, shrewd "man 
of affairs," his is always the sure touch of the trained hand 
that has back of it a trained mind and a fearless spirit; nor 
can any true Virginian ever forget that it was in chiefest 
measure at his instance that instructions (already ratified 
by the "Quarter Court," November 28th, 1618) were sent out 
to Sir George Yeardley to summon an Assembly of Free 
Burgesses to meet at Jamestown, July 30th, 1619 — the first 
popular legislative assembly convened in the "New World" 
and one that met and exercised legislative functions more 
than a year he fore the "Pilgrims" sailed from Southampton 
in the "MayfloioerT 

Though Sandys was titular "Treasurer" only for a single 
year (declining renomination in 1620 lest his continuance in 
the high office might jeopardise the interests of "the Com- 
pany" because of the intense animosity the king cherished 
towards him— the latter saying vindictively to the deputation 
from "the Company" that waited on him humbly begging 
the withdrawal of his objection to Sandys' candidacy: "He is 
my greatest enemy — choose the Devil, if you will, but not Sir 
Edwin Sandys"— though Sandys, I say, was titular "Treas- 
urer" but for a single year, Gardiner one of the greatest of 
modern historians who knows that time with a breadth and 
accuracy that few may pretend to declares that his tenure of 
the Treasurership "made 1619 a date to he rememhered in the 
history of English colonization.''' 1 

But as a matter of fact long before and long after he 
was nominally "Treasurer," he was practically "the power 

26 



behind the throne" and his voice consistently the most po- 
tent voice in shaping and controlling the destinies of Vir- 
ginia. 

On June 28th, 1620, he was succeeded as Treasurer by 
Henry Wriothesly third Earl of Southampton, with the 
younger Ferrar as Deputy — both staunch adherents of his. 

Southampton — ward of the "Virgin Queen" in early boy- 
hood — friend in his young manhood of the gallant and un- 
fortunate Essex under whom he served in the expedition 
against Cadiz, later on taking part in the latter's hapless 
mad-brained "rising'" — the friend too and only patron of 
Shakespeare who first dedicated to him his "Venus and 
Adonis" and, a year later, his "Lucrece" in such burning 
words of passionate devotion as savor to the modern ear of 
romantic extravagance — rarely accomplished in "polite let- 
ters" and marvellously handsome with his deep-violet eyes 
and long auburn love-locks "softer than the finest silk" (we 
are told) falling over his shoulders — the darling of the court- 
ladies (especially of that radiant beauty, Mistress Elizabeth 
Vernon) — Southampton was yet no languorous "carpet- 
knight," no mere plutocratic "Maecenas" of men-of-letters, but 
a sagacious statesman and liberal promoter of colonization, 
while he had proved himself in the Low Countries an intrepid 
soldier whose "forward spirit'' (as his friend Shakespeare 
hath it) ever "lifted him where most trade of danger ranged." 
A fearless champion of the imperilled interests of Virginia, 
he generously dared all to frustate the king's purpose to 
take into his own hands the government of the colony in 
1624 and six weeks after his efforts to thwart his "royal mas- 
ter" had proved of no avail left England to take service 
again in Holland where he (as well as his eldest son and 
heir) perished of fever within a few months. 

Nor may I pause to sketch even in outline the beautiful 
life of his Deputy, Nicholas Ferrar the younger, whose deli- 
cate scholarly face, etherial in its sweet asceticism and 
touched with a radiance not of this world, shines upon us 

27 



across the centuries from the canvas of Janssen yonder at 
"Magdalene," Cambridge, with the rapt expression of some 
transfigured mediaeval saint. 

Of the many debts of gratitude that we Virginians of to- 
day owe these two last is the transcription of the "Records of 
the Virginia Company" that Ferrar made, at the instance of 
Southampton, with phenomenal industry and rapidity when 
the unexpected demand came from the King for all the orig- 
inal papers of "the Company." 

[This transcription long remained in the Southampton 
family, was finally purchased from the executors of the 
fourth Earl by William Byrd (the second) of Westover, 
later on came into the possession of Thomas Jefferson, and 
finally acquired by the Library of Congress was published 
in 1906 in two stately volumes]. 

To return from this apparent digression which is yet 
not irrelevant. 

All things seemed propitious for the success of the plan 
which the robust common-senses of these practical altruists 
assured them was no visionary scheme. 

True, during the three years, no brick had been laid nor 
timber "squared" for the erection of school, college, or uni- 
versity, but that was because, as we have seen, of the sagacious 
resolve of Sandys and his colleagues not to begin work (save 
in the case of the "East India \SchooV) until the fertile lands 
that constituted the chiefest part of the endowment should 
have been put under systematic cultivation, thus ensuring the 
certainty of a substantial "Annuall Eevennue." 

But the preparations were well in hand — the brick- 
makers under contract — the tenants engaged in clearing new 
ground and in planting corn and tobacco — the Rev'd Patrick 
Copeland elected as first "Rector of the College "—masters 
and ushers engaged for the schools — when suddenly on that 
woful morning of Good Friday, 1622, the bolt shot from the 
blue. 

"The Great Massacre" (as it came to be known), planned 
by Opechancanough with devilish treachery and cunning, 

28 



burst upon the unsuspecting settlements up and down and 
on both sides of the river like a very "besom of destruction." 

I must send you to the pages of Smith and Purchas and 
Stith and others for the gruesome details. It suffices to state 
briefly that nearly one-third of the colonists were slain, no 
age nor sex spared, and no revolting element of fiendish fe- 
rocity lacking. 

Among those who perished were six "Councillors," in- 
cluding the gentle and pious Thorpe who had already in- 
curred no little sharp criticism from some of Dale's veterans 
because of his extraordinary benefactions and weak indul- 
gences to the Indians. 

The news did not reach London until near the middle of 
July and it seems the very irony of unmixed tragedy that 
at the very time when the gaunt survivors of the butchery 
lay starving within the palisades of settlements from Hen- 
rico to "Martin's Hundred" — hollowed-eyed, stem-faced men 
a-watch day and night with trusty matchlocks hard at hand, 
and pallid women clutching in fitful slumber their babies to 
their breasts, their nerves a-tingle with dread suspense lest 
the wild war-whoop, rising higher and ever higher in shrill 
crescendo, should rend the mid-night sky— that at that very 
time there was being held in London under the auspices of 
"the Company" a special "Thanksgiving Service" at Bow 
Church in Cheapside, whither came in their sedan-chairs smil- 
ing dames in gowns of stiff brocade and petticoat of taffeta, 
shod in velvet shoon, escorted by gallants from Soho or St. 
James's Square in slashed doublet, with "falling bands" of 
richest lace, and verdingale breeches and gartered "Venetian 
hose," or perhaps by rich merchants from Bishopsgate and 
Lombard street in dress of soberer cut and hue— all to hear 
that fluent divine the Reverend Patrick Copeland ere he 
took ship for Henrico pronounce his eloquent discourse on 
'"Virginia's God be thanked, or a Sermon of Thanksgiving for 
the Happie Successe of the Affayres in Virginia this last' 
yeare" 

29 



I have myself read that sermon not so long ago and the 
only comment that can be made rises unbidden, "O Iago, the 
pity of it," the pity of it ! 

Only a few more words and I have done. 

The "Massacre" was indeed a direful blow but it was 
not necessarily fatal. 

The colonists took heart again as men of pure Anglo- 
Saxon strain ever do and after exacting the blood debt from 
the savages to the uttermost drop set themselves resolutely to 
the task of rebuilding their waste-places; while "the Com- 
pany" (which means Sandys and, the men I have mentioned) 
paraphrasing St. Jerome's immortal aphorism that "the blood 
of the Martyrs is the seed of the Church" wrote out hearten- 
ing words of cheer (with promises of instant help) to the 
Governor and Council, saying that "they saw such a disposi- 
tion in Men's minds as made them think that this Addition 
of Price had endeared the Purchase, and that the Blood of 
their People would be the Seed of the Plantation." 

But within two years when skies were brightening again 
and high hopes once more enkindled came the final and irre- 
parable stroke — far more blighting than "the Great Massa- 
cre" — the revocation of the Charter and dissolution of u the 
Company." 

"Touchstone," as you all remember, in one of his saucy 
quips to "the melancholy Jaques" in "As You Like It" says 
that there is "much virtue in //" and one cannot help re- 
volving in one's mind what would have been the probable 
outcome of this noble educational enterprise "if" Prince 
Henry had lived and "if" Dale in consequence had been kept 
in active command in Virginia. Certainly under the iron dis- 
cipline of Dale who was feared alike by feckless colonist and 
treacherous red-skin and who was more than a match for the 
wily Opechancanough, there would have been none of the 
criminal carelessness on the part of the settlers in allowing 
the Indians to run in and out of their houses at all hours— 
none of the well-meant but foolish "indulgments" of the sav- 
ages on the part of his kinsman, pious Mr. Thorpe, no slack- 



30 



ness in the ceaseless vigilance which he exacted alike of offi- 
cers and men — perhaps no massacre at all. 

Prince Henry, as fondly loved by court and common-folk 
as James Stuart was secretly hated, would possibly have 
been strong enough to stay the hand of his avaricious father 
when stretched out to destroy "the Company" of which the 
Prince was the enthusiastic patron — no more likely to be de- 
luded than were Sandys and Southampton by the specious 
pretense of the royal hypocrite that it was' their mismanage- 
ment of the affairs of the "corporation and not his own in- 
satiable greed of money that actuated him in his course. 

Possibly! possibly! Who knows? 

Such surmisings — such "might-have-beens" — belong to the 
realm of dreams — but even the most determined dryasdust who 
can read between the lines, will pause and dream at times ! 

Here ends my task, for it is not within the purview of 
such an address as this to consider the educational founda- 
tions that came later on in this and in the succeeding century. 

No matter how robust our faith that "all things work 
together for good" — no matter how reverently we "bow be- 
fore the Awful Will," as brave old Thackeray sings — I think 
that despite the abundant educational blessings that have 
come to us in the fulness of time most of us must ever feel a 
poignant regret that untoward fate wrested from our mother- 
state the abiding honor and glory of having within her bor- 
ders the first permanent college and university in the West- 
ern world. 

As our own illustrious historian, Dr. Philip Alexander 
Bruce, eloquently declares in his monumental "Institutional 
History of Virginia in the Seventeenth Century": "Virginia 
in such an institution would have possessed a foundation that 
would have been clothed with the deeply romantic interest 
thrown around the colleges of the Old World by the beauti- 
fying touch of time and by the glorious achievements of their 
sons on every stage of action through a succession of cen- 
turies." 



$1 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 



014 367 046 6, 



